ANTAGONISM BETWEEN DARWINISM AND MORALITY.
§ 1. _Objections to Darwinism from an Ethical Standpoint._
From what we said at the beginning of the preceding preliminary view, it is
evident that we have to look for the advocates of an irreconcilableness
between morality and Darwinism, not in the camp of the followers of the
latter, but only in that of its adversaries. It is true, such advocates
were never wanting. In pamphlets and journals, it has been often enough
said that Darwinism cuts through the nerve of life, not only of religion,
but also of morality.
It was demonstrated that in making man a mere product of nature, and
degrading him to a being that is nothing else but a more highly developed
animal, Darwinism takes from human personality its value, from the realms
of morality its dignity, and from its demands their autonomy. In making the
struggle for existence the principle of all development and, by extending
it to the development and social relations of man, at the same time the
human social principle, it puts in place of self-denial and love the
principle of egoism and boorishness and the right of the stronger, gives
full course to the unchaining of all animal passions, and coquettes with
all the emotions which, flattering the animal part of man, {231} aims at
the subversion of all that exists and at the destruction of the ideal
acquisitions of mankind. In tracing everything which constitutes the higher
position and dignity of man back to his own work, and permitting it to be
worked out of physical, spiritual, and ethical brutishness, in slow
development and effort, closely related to the animal kingdom, it fosters
and nourishes haughtiness in an intolerable way. And finally, in breaking
off and denying the dependence of man upon God, and leading to mechanical
determinism, it destroys the deepest and most effective motive to moral
action--the tracing of the moral law to the authority of the divine
Law-giver, and the consciousness of an individual moral responsibility.
It cannot be denied that many of the most zealous Darwinians gave too much
cause for such a conception and representation of the ethical consequences
of their system. In view of the fact that they applied the selection
principle, with its most radical consequences, to the origin and
development of mankind, and that they elevated the same to the ethical and
social principle of mankind and did not permit the acceptance of any new
and higher agencies in mankind except those already active in the animal
and the organic world, and that they gladly treated this selection
principle also in the social and ethical realm as a struggle for existence,
it was simply an entirely logical conclusion that the advocates of the
moral nobility of mankind reproached such a reproduced Darwinism with
degrading the moral dignity of man and with replacing love by egoism.
Besides, in view of the fact that they declared materialistic monism, even
the most naked atheism, the only conclusion of {232} Darwinism, and
extended their mechanistic explanation of the world to a determinism in the
highest degree mechanistic, and, carried to its utmost limit, to a denial
of human freedom, it was not to be wondered at that those who recognize in
theism the basis of all life worthy of man, and in the freedom of man one
of the most precious pearls in the crown of his human dignity and of his
creation in the image of God, complained of Darwinism's taking from
morality its strongest motive and from moral action its responsibility.
And, finally, in view of the fact that those who thus express themselves in
their works showed but rarely, or not at all, some of the noblest fruits of
moral education, such as respectful treatment of adversaries, humbleness
and tact, they could not themselves reasonably complain that there was
ascribed to their doctrine an influence detrimental to moral education. All
this we find abundantly confirmed in the publications of Büchner and
Häckel, and in many articles of the "Ausland."
But the question is, whether those Darwinians who drew these conclusions
were by their scientific investigations obliged to draw them, or whether
they did not rather reach their religious and ethical view of the world by
quite other ways, and whether they did not in a wholly arbitrary and
irresponsible manner make extensive use of Darwinism in this anti-religious
and ethically objectional direction--a fact which we shall try to prove in
the last part of our investigation.
Of course the Darwinians who spoke thus, did not intend to injure the moral
principle, but only to purify and reform it; and therefore we shall have to
speak of them in the following section.
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